Years ago, just after the fall of the USSR, the Museum of Flight in Seattle acquired a MiG-21 aircraft on the cheap from the Czech Republic [0]. They had it shipped to the US in pieces, and then flew over a crew of engineers and techs to put it back together. They had a few extra days in the US at the end of the process, so the US crew and the Czech crew agreed that it'd be fun to go fishing.
They stopped by a grocery store on the way out. When the Czech guys saw there weren't any lines and food was plentiful, they got upset. They thought they were being shown propaganda. The group ended up cancelling the fishing trip and spending the whole day just driving all over town and stopping at all sorts of grocery stores, big and small, to prove that they were seeing the real experience of real Americans instead of an elaborate deception.
Hmm, interesting. I read a nearly identical story about Viktor Belenko, a Soviet test pilot who defected to the US with a MiG 25 by way of Japan in the 70s.
Basically while on some sort of mission he booked it across the Sea of Japan, landed unannounced at a Japanese airport, and jumped out of his plane asking that he in his plane be handed over to the Americans. (The Soviets were pretty pissed about this, so the plane was later returned to the Soviet Union... disassembled... in dozens of different crates).
Apparently during part of the process of integrating him into American society his handlers brought him to a grocery store, and he initially became concerned that he was being lied to. IIRC he also requested that he be allowed to spend some time working at a modern American farm.
The luxury of an abundance of food seems to be a common theme.
Do you have a citation for the story, are you sure it really were Czechs? It seems a bit over the top. The Czech Republic is right next to Germany, so even before the fall of the wall, they had the ability to watch Western TV, and also generally were far from as secluded as Russia or even North Korea. And of course in the nineties, they instantly had free press and all, given the Czech Republic was always a very westward-leaning country (Prague Spring and all).
Yes, it was the Czechs; the specific company was Aero Vodochody [0]. I don't know if the technicians who did the reassembly were typical, or outliers.
I don't know if the full story has been published anywhere. I read it in a binder labelled "MiG acquisition" which was on a shelf in the museum's docent lounge, and I've also heard it from several staff members and volunteers. (Sadly, Jim Blue is no longer with us and therefore cannot confirm directly [0].)
An interesting inverse story:
Years ago, just after the fall of the USSR, the Museum of Flight in Seattle acquired a MiG-21 aircraft on the cheap from the Czech Republic [0]. They had it shipped to the US in pieces, and then flew over a crew of engineers and techs to put it back together. They had a few extra days in the US at the end of the process, so the US crew and the Czech crew agreed that it'd be fun to go fishing.
They stopped by a grocery store on the way out. When the Czech guys saw there weren't any lines and food was plentiful, they got upset. They thought they were being shown propaganda. The group ended up cancelling the fishing trip and spending the whole day just driving all over town and stopping at all sorts of grocery stores, big and small, to prove that they were seeing the real experience of real Americans instead of an elaborate deception.
[0] http://www.museumofflight.org/aircraft/mikoyan-gurevich-mig-... -- I worked here for several years, and heard the story from multiple sources, including the notes Jim Blue wrote about it.